MIT undergraduate engineering again ranked No. 1

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MIT has held the top spot in U.S. News & World Report’s annual undergraduate engineering rankings for more than 20 years, and this year is no different, the magazine announced today.

MIT’s top standing, ranked among peer institutions, will appear in both the magazine and in the 2011 edition of the magazine’s annual college guide, “America’s Best Colleges” that hits newsstands Monday, Aug. 23. All rankings went online early today.

Within engineering, MIT was ranked No. 1 for its undergraduate programs in aeronautics and astronautics, chemical engineering, computer engineering, electrical engineering, materials sciences and mechanical engineering. MIT also ranked in the top five in biomedical engineering and environmental/environmental health engineering.

The MIT Sloan School of Management was ranked second nationwide among undergraduate business programs. Sloan also received first-place ratings in four specialties: management information systems, production/operations management, quantitative analysis/methods and supply chain management/logistics. Sloan was ranked third for finance and fifth for entrepreneurship.

Overall, MIT was ranked seventh among national universities, tied with Caltech (Harvard was ranked first). Last year, MIT and Caltech tied for fourth place with Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania. This year, Stanford and UPenn tied for fifth.

U.S. News & World Report used a number of criteria to determine overall ranking, including data collected from the schools, surveys of top academics, student retention rate, the school’s commitment to instruction and selectivity. Two changes in the magazine’s methodology probably contributed to the shift in MIT’s overall ranking.

The magazine again rated MIT among the top 10 most racially diverse universities in America. The Institute was ranked fifth among the nation's most economically diverse universities as determined by the percentage of students receiving Pell grants.

Finally, the report judged an MIT education to be a great value. MIT ranked fourth among national universities in a measure of price relative to quality; last year, the Institute ranked fifth. MIT also made the magazine’s list of schools whose students have the lightest debt loads: Forty-five percent of MIT’s Class of 2009 graduated with loans, and the average amount of debt among students who owed money was $15,043, the report said.

The magazine rated MIT’s graduate programs in April. MIT’s School of Engineering was again ranked number one in that annual evaluation — it has achieved the top score each year since those rankings were created in 1990 — while Sloan jumped from fifth to third among the nation’s MBA programs.